(Base 01) Metal from Shine
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: He never did get RizeGreymon back, and that was probably the least dramatic change.


**A/N:** Written for the Building Blocks challenge, word prompt #161 - recondition, and for the Diversity Writing Challenge, b47 - write about losing something.

* * *

 _Base series_

 **Metal from Shine**

He never did get RizeGreymon black. The glimmer was replaced by hardened metal - what some would have, in the before days, said was a sign of the stain from DarkMOON. But it wasn't DarkMOON that caused the stain, or SunSHINE and now they knew that. Knew that after those petty enmities, those petty differences that bordered on racial discrimination, had almost destroyed them.

Some of them, it had destroyed. Chief Glare and Ophanimon...and no, he couldn't blame Sayo for that because it had to be done and nobody else even knew. It was their dark little secret - just like her Chief Julia and DarkKnightmon, just like Alphamon's part in the whole affair. As far as they were concerned, Chronosmon spat off little baby Grimmon and Grimmon sucked the digisoul out of the digimon and left them in varying degrees of helplessness. The chiefs' weren't too badly affected. The gatekeepers were reduced to their in-training forms. His and Sayo's, as that year's champion and runner up respectively, were one level higher. Most of their teammates were left nursing eggs.

And then they had to work together. Especially when they were locked out of their respective cities and their chiefs had gone crazy, especially when the entire force of Royal Knights attacked them to keep their secret safe even though they had bloody secrets of their own to nurture and they'd lost more than those knights on their shiny thrones above the world could ever hope to. It made them mad - so mad - but what was there to do? They lost, they fought, they dealt with all the curveballs and now they had some semblance of life back. The Lilamon he'd fought in the tournament was gone: it winds up as a Blossomon instead before going the further step and becoming Lotusmon. And his own RizeGreymon that had fought her had subituted beauty for brawn in his regrowth and was now MetalGreymon.

The good part was that the world had changed in the process, so his teammates from Light Fang weren't too disappointed that they wouldn't get to see ShineGreymon - though there was a slim possibility still there. Lilamon turn into Lotusmon as well after all, though she missed out on Rosemon and maybe a rose might have suited the devilish Sayo he'd fought that first time - just like shine had suited him. And then they'd changed, and their regressed digimon had changed as well, regrowing and taking a somewhat different path to before. So maybe it didn't matter he didn't get RizeGreymon back at the end of the road, because he hadn't lost the friend and fighter within. Not like he'd lost Ravemon, who'd been torn gleefully to pieces by a crazed Ophanimon. Not like he'd lost Garudamon, burnt to a crisp that had outmatched her wing blade. Not like Sayo's QueenChessmon, hammered into oblivion by DarkKnightmon's blade. Not like her Megadramon, felled with a single, brutal, cut from Ominmon's sword. And that wasn't even considering what they'd had to abandon to get through the infected cities, to get to the chiefs and put a plug in the madness that teamed. And that didn't say what Grimmon had cost them. Nor what the seven demon lords had stripped for them: everything else. They'd crawled away with three digimon left apiece: the same three that had fought in the tournament and all the other friends and allies they'd formed in between were gone, including their navidigimon.

And of course the rest of the world didn't know the true extent. Even he didn't know how much Sayo had lost and it was the same for her. RizeGreymon's change was however something they could see, and something that he could see quite plainly too, day after day because he was still here, still standing by his side with Apollomon and Ophanimon. And one day he'd digivolve and that change will be buried into the past as well: into WarGreymon or ShineGreymon and both of those could have come from RizeGreymon as well, so perhaps it doesn't even matter...but, for the moment, it's a scar that everyone sees, that metal instead of shine.


End file.
